UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be
published as HC 359-iii

House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

NORTHERN
IRELAND AFFAIRS
COMMITTEE

Wednesday
13 May 2009

RT HON SIR PETER GIBSON

Evidence heard in Public Questions 121 - 171

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

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Transcribed by the Official Shorthand Writers to the
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Q121 Chairman:
Sir
Peter, on behalf of the Committee could I welcome you and thank you for coming
this afternoon? You will understand why
we are looking at this subject. We were
approached by the Omagh Support Group after the showing of the Panorama programme and obviously we felt
it only right to see them. We have
enormous sympathy for them, because that was the most horrible and ghastly
atrocity of all the Troubles and we therefore have a duty to listen
carefully. We are totally convinced of
their utter genuineness. We have seen
the producer of the programme, John Ware.
We very much wanted to see you and we are grateful to you for
coming. I understand that you would like
to say a few words at the beginning before we begin the questioning.

Sir Peter Gibson: If that is permissible. Can
I show you the length of the few words?
It is two A4 pages. I would like
to be allowed to read the whole of it, because I am hoping that it may
forestall some lines of questioning. I
may be over-optimistic, I recognise.

Q122 Chairman:
Please carry on. We do not normally have such long opening
statements but in these circumstances I am perfectly happy to have them.

Sir Peter Gibson: Thank you very much. On 17 September 2008 the Prime
Minister invited me, as the Intelligence Services Commissioner, "to review any
intercepted intelligence material available to the security and intelligence
agencies in relation to the Omagh bombing and how this intelligence was
shared". Those were the limited terms
stipulated for the review and, in accepting the Prime Minister's invitation and
in conducting that review, I endeavoured to adhere to those terms. Although the Prime Minister's action appears
to have been prompted by the Panorama
programme and by the article in the Sunday
Telegraph immediately preceding that programme, I was not asked to examine,
nor did I examine, any issue other than those identified to me by the Prime
Minister in those terms, whether or not other issues featured in the Panorama programme or Sunday Telegraph article. I believe that in my full report to the Prime
Minister I complied comprehensively with those terms. I say that because I am aware of criticisms
that I failed to deal with a number of issues.
Those criticisms come from those who both have not seen my full report
and who would have liked me to deal with matters which in fact go beyond the
terms of my review. Those who have seen
that report - and they include not only ministers, the agencies and the Chief
Constable but also the Intelligence and Security Committee - have made no such
criticism: on the contrary. The
published report is only a summary of my full report. Because of the nature of the subject matter
of my review, there were real difficulties in producing a version of my full
report which would not make disclosures damaging to national security. My summary report maintains the usual
practice adopted by those who for national security reasons cannot confirm or
deny a particular allegation. That
practice is well recognised and respected in the courts. It means that those who say that I have not
denied an allegation cannot properly interpret such non-denial as a
confirmation. As you know from my letter
to you, in answering any questions which you may ask of me I can only do so
from what is in the summary report and cannot draw on the contents of the full
report; but the Government decided that some disclosures should be made in a published
report, for two reasons which I set out in paragraph 3 of my summary
report. First, the allegations which had
been made in the Panorama programme
were very serious and damaging to the good name of the agencies, and I found no
substance whatever in those allegations.
Second, by those allegations expectations may have been raised among the
families of the victims of the bombing.
One member of this Committee is recorded as having asked Mr Ware, "Did
it upset you that Sir Peter almost implied that you had been leading the
families on?". Let me make absolutely
clear that I am not suggesting, and have never wished to suggest, that Mr Ware
was deliberately leading the families on.
If after my report the families choose to believe that the allegations
are well founded, that is a matter for them.
Nor am I suggesting, or have ever suggested, that those who apparently
gave information supporting the allegations were deliberately lying; but they
were, it seems, relying on their memories of events ten years ago and they did
not have the advantage of seeing the documentation which I have seen, nor of
taking evidence from other persons who were directly concerned at the relevant
time and whom I interviewed. All this
satisfied me, as I explain in detail in my full report, that some recollections
were simply not reliable. There are
other comments made by another member of this Committee about what I "almost
said" or what he read into words I used in my summary report. Again, I have to say that I have not been
understood correctly. I did not say, nor
was it my intention to say, what it is suggested I "almost said"; nor was it
right to read into my words what was said to have been read into them. As other members appear to share the same
misconception, can I briefly try to put the record straight? Mr Ware referred in his evidence to what he
called "the protocols" of GCHQ. I
believe he was referring to the procedures set out in paragraph 23 of the
summary report. Those procedures
included that by which information from GCHQ to Special Branch could be passed
on to others in the RUC, subject to a request being made to GCHQ to consent to
the language Special Branch would use in such dissemination. However, in paragraph 32 I reported that no
such request was made at the material time.
Members have inferred, in acceptance of a theory of Mr Ware, that this
was because Special Branch knew that "There was not a hope in hell of them
getting an affirmative answer from..." GCHQ.
But I also referred in paragraph 32 to the fact that no police witness
could tell me of any request to GCHQ which was refused. Further, I had recorded in paragraph 15 the
comments in the Crompton Report on the criticisms made of Special Branch as
being reluctant to divulge sensitive information that might have assisted CID
in the course of investigations. There
is no hint of criticism of GCHQ's procedures in that or any other post-bombing
report, and it could not be said that the relevant intelligence not being divulged
was limited to information from GCHQ. Mr
Ware referred to "the rules" being changed, and some members of this Committee
appear to have accepted his interpretation of the change as "A recognition that
the protocols in place at the time were not fit at least for the purpose of
bringing to justice people involved in mass murder"; but, as Mr Perry told you,
the change was a PSNI change. GCHQ's
procedures have not changed. There are
numerous other matters in Mr Ware's evidence with which I am afraid I do
not agree, but I will not take up time in this opening statement to go into
them. I can tell you that nothing that
Mr Ware has said publicly since the summary report was published, including his
evidence to you, has caused me to wish to alter anything I said in my full
report or in the summary report. If you
wish to ask me questions about Mr Ware's evidence to you, I will do my
best to answer them, subject to the caveat that I cannot draw on material
contained in the full report which is not contained in the summary report. I would like to mention one other
matter. Mr Gallagher told this Committee
that he had written me a letter in which he asked me for my terms of reference
but that I had not replied to him. No
such communication ever reached me. It
is not apparent to me why Mr Gallagher should seek to learn those terms
from me when the Prime Minister had made them public. Thank you, Chairman.

Q123 Chairman:
Thank
you very much indeed for that, Sir Peter.
You will appreciate, as we do, that this is a delicate matter because we
have not seen your full report. We have
made requests repeatedly to the Prime Minister that I as Chairman should on
behalf of the Committee be allowed to see the full report, and those requests
have been refused. The Committee is very
concerned about that because, as I said at the beginning, this is the most
appalling atrocity in all of the Troubles.
We are the Committee charged to look into these matters by
Parliament. I appreciate that this is
not your decision and it is no criticism of you at all, but we are very
concerned that we have not been given that opportunity. We did not ask for it for the whole
Committee; the Committee asked for it for their Chairman so that I could
reassure people - we hoped. However, I
am not in that position and, as my colleague Mr Fraser says, it was a
unanimous view of this Committee. We
will not go into that now but what I would like to know, without transgressing
on the territory that you say you cannot stray into, is this. How many pages does the full, unclassified
report contain in comparison with the 15 pages of the published summary?

Sir Peter Gibson: My secretary and I have a little disagreement as to the length of
it. I would say it was about four times
as long as the summary report.

Q124 Chairman:
About
four times as long. In other words, it
probably runs to about 60 pages.

Sir Peter Gibson: Something like that, that is right.

Q125 Chairman:
Of
which we have 15.

Sir Peter Gibson: Yes.

Q126 Chairman:
Can
you guarantee to this Committee that there is nothing in the classified
material which supports the concern among the Omagh families about whether
those who carried out the bombing could have been quickly identified and
arrested in the immediate aftermath? You
will understand that they have asked us this question; we are not able to answer
it because we have not seen the full report.
Can you give that assurance?

Sir Peter Gibson: I can and do.

Q127 Chairman:
Without any equivocation?

Sir Peter Gibson: Without any equivocation at all.

Q128 Chairman:
When
we come on to your inquiry, you interviewed 24 people. What criteria did you use in deciding which
24 individuals you would interview?

Sir Peter Gibson: I sought help from those in a position to give me help. For example, the PSNI suggested a list of
people in the police or former members of the police whom I should
interview. I interviewed all of them
save for one person who was not willing to be interviewed. As I went through my interviews, other names
were mentioned and I followed up all those names. There is a point in Mr Ware's evidence which
I am afraid is simply not correct. If
necessary, I can go into that. It was a
rolling programme of people I was interviewing.
On the securities service and GCHQ side, I started again in much the
same way. They suggested people who
would have information that was likely to assist me. They also provided witness statements in many
cases. Again, I was not content just
with that. As I went through the
evidence, it seemed to me I ought to interview some other people and again I
had that opportunity, which I carried out.
Apart from another policeman, who again would not wish to be
interviewed, I do not believe there was anyone whom I wanted to see whom I did
not see - either see or speak to.

Q129 Chairman:
Just
two quick follow-up questions from that. The two policemen who refused to give evidence
to you - would you have liked to have had the power to compel them to give
evidence to you?

Sir Peter Gibson: Yes.

Q130 Chairman:
But
of course you did not have that power.

Sir Peter Gibson: I did not have that power.
This was a private inquiry.

Q131 Chairman:
Indeed, I appreciate that, Sir Peter. Were there any people who offered to give
evidence whose offer you declined?

Sir Peter Gibson: I am not aware of anyone, no.

Q132 Chairman:
Mr
Ware obviously did not entirely enjoy his encounter with you, from the way he
described it to us. We can make no
comment on that because we were not present, but he told the Committee that he
was given an inadequate opportunity to supply answers on matters of
detail. Is he justified in saying that?

Sir Peter Gibson: No.

Q133 Chairman:
Could
you amplify on that?

Sir Peter Gibson: Yes. I interviewed him
towards the end of my inquiry. I did not
send him questions in advance because it was obvious that I would be asking
questions about his programme. He
indicated to me that he had not done any revision, as it were. He refers in his evidence to you mention of
things like algorithms. That certainly
was not mentioned by me. I was
simply trying to ascertain from him those matters which were contained in the
programme which he was able to speak to of his own knowledge; because some
things in his programme indicated the source of the information; others he was
silent about. So I was trying to
ascertain the extent to which he had information which I would be able to
assess.

Q134 Chairman:
Before I move on to Kate Hoey, could I just
ask you one final question from the Chair at this stage? I explained that the Committee was unanimous
in wishing me to see this report and the Prime Minister turned down that
request. Were you actually consulted on
that request?

Sir Peter Gibson: No.

Q135 Chairman:
Had
you been consulted, what would your advice have been? Would you have objected?

Sir Peter Gibson: I personally would not - if I was to lay aside all thoughts about
security and secrecy, because, if you will forgive me saying so, I do not know all
your backgrounds and so on. I would have
been delighted that as many people as possible should see the full report, so
that they could see for themselves the extent to which chapter and verse had
been provided.

Chairman: Thank you very much for
that. I much appreciate and I think that
the whole Committee appreciates that very frank answer.

Q136 Kate
Hoey: Following on from that, is it not
possible to produce this report with more detail in it, in fact the entire
report, with just some bits blanked out for public perusal?

Sir Peter Gibson: As I said in my opening statement, there were real difficulties in
producing a summary report. The matters
that are dealt with in the report are for the most part of the highest
sensitivity. All the police would tell
you that. It is therefore
extraordinarily difficult to fillet, other than to say the conclusion: which is
on the particular allegations within the terms of my review, which I found
simply not backed by evidence. So, I am
sorry - one always prefers that one's full statement should be made
available. It is like a judgment where a
summary is given and one would like everyone to see the full report.

Q137 Kate
Hoey: I know that you mentioned it in your
statement, but it was quite long and perhaps we did not all take in every word
of it. The Omagh Support and Self-Help
Group, when they saw us, were very concerned that they did not even get an acknowledgement
to the fact that they had asked for an interview and details of your terms of
reference. I understand that they could
probably have got terms of reference from somewhere else, but did you know that
they had written to you?

Sir Peter Gibson: No, not at all. The first I
knew about it was when I saw the transcript of what had been said in front of
you. I had not understood that they had
asked for anything more than what Mr Gallagher had told you, and that was
simply the terms of my review.

Q138 Chairman:
Would
you have seen them, had they asked?

Sir Peter Gibson: I think I would have questioned what was the benefit to be
obtained. I share entirely with you
my abhorrence of what occurred in Omagh on 15 August 1998. I share your sympathy with the
families. The atrocity was so terrible
that I hope every right‑minded person would do that. But, as you may know from what was said to
you by Mr Gallagher and you may know from what you have read, my
appointment was hardly welcomed by Mr Gallagher. He thought the idea that I should spend three
months in conducting this review was - he did not use the word "absurd" but he
said "a few weeks would have sufficed".
When my summary report was published, it was again dismissed in no
uncertain terms, and he has again applied certain adjectives about me to
you. So I start with that slight unease
as to what would be produced by my seeing them.
Of course, if it is simply a matter of looking them in the eye and
repeating what I have said to you, of course I would do that. As you know, however, the reassurance which
they would no doubt seek from me was one which the Prime Minister sought to
give and, from the reports that I have read of what happened when he saw them,
that may not have been wholly successful.

Q139 Kate
Hoey: Sir Peter, I am trying to
clarify. Are you saying that you do not
think they wrote a letter? I would imagine
that someone like you does not have your letters interfered with or checked; so
I assume it did not go to the right place or it went to somebody else who
intervened. What is your view on that?

Sir Peter Gibson: I simply do not know. I do
know, because I have heard one website criticise me, that I do not have a
website and there is no address given for me; so I am frankly curious to know
what was the address at which Mr Gallagher thought he would find me. But my secretariat has received nothing.

Kate Hoey: I think it does raise a number of interesting questions, that a
letter that has gone to you, presumably at an address that Mr Gallagher knew ---

Chairman: I do not doubt the total
probity of both our witnesses. I am sure
Mr Gallagher sent a letter. I am
equally convinced - and you have a reputation for courtesy - that you did not
receive it.

Q140 Kate
Hoey: I appreciate that, Chairman. I am just saying that, in view of what this
is all about, and that we are dealing with intelligence services and with all
of these things, it does seem very strange that no one seems to know where a
letter went. Anyway, you have not had
the letter and you have said that, even if you had had it, you might not have
seen them. Can I ask you one further
question, just to get it on the record really?
Are you absolutely clear that there is nothing that any better
intelligence that was there and what you saw could have made a difference? In other words, is it clear that the Omagh
bombing could not have been prevented by the better use of any of the
intelligence that might have existed at the time?

Sir Peter Gibson: Yes.

Q141 David
Simpson: Sir Peter, can I touch on the
alleged "live" monitoring of the telephone contacts? Did GCHQ monitor specific mobile phone
numbers relevant to the bombing at the request of Special Branch and, further
to that, was any such monitoring carried out "live"?

Sir Peter Gibson: Forgive me if I appear evasive but I do not think I can answer that
consistently with what in the technical jargon is the "NC..." - I can neither
confirm nor deny. I fear I cannot answer
that, much as I would like to.

Q142 Chairman:
Are
the answers to that in the full version of the report?

Sir Peter Gibson: Of course, yes.

Q143 David
Simpson: It is in the full report?

Sir Peter Gibson: Absolutely.

Chairman: This is why we find it so
unsatisfactory. This is no
criticism. I repeat this. It is not your fault, but we do find it so
difficult that I have not been able to see this, so that I can tell my
colleagues. They would accept my word; I
know they would. It is not that we do
not accept yours. You must not feel
that. Nobody is questioning your
integrity at all, but we do feel at a disadvantage.

David Simpson: Working in the dark, Chairman.

Chairman: Yes, we are; but we are
grateful to you for the clarifications.
Could I move on to Stephen Hepburn?

Q144 Mr
Hepburn: Could I ask you a question about
the Panorama programme? The Panorama
programme obviously had a tremendous impact after this terrible tragedy. Having done your report, what is your view of
the Panorama programme?

Sir Peter Gibson: I am very reluctant to stir things up further. As the Chairman has commented, Mr Ware thinks
he was treated badly by me and I really much prefer not to answer that; but, if
you press me, I am afraid I think the BBC got it completely wrong.

Q145 Mr
Hepburn: Just for the record, are you
satisfied that all the relevant intelligence that was passed from GCHQ to
Special Branch was done in line with the procedures but also as efficiently as
possible?

Sir Peter Gibson: As efficiently? I am sorry?

Q146 Mr
Hepburn: As efficiently or expeditiously as
possible.

Sir Peter Gibson: Yes. I say so, I hope
expressly, that there was nothing that was not fully - again, subject to this
not confirming or denying intercepts and so on - but there was nothing that was
not passed fully and quickly to Special Branch, the designated recipient of any
information from GCHQ.

Q147 Mr
Hepburn: Then why did it take CID something
like nine months to trawl through literally millions and millions of telephone
records, mobile phone records, to try and trace a suspect device?

Sir Peter Gibson: That you will have to ask Special Branch. I repeat what appears in my report. I did not
look into the reasons why Special Branch acted cautiously - I use the adverb
"cautiously" to describe what occurred.
I saw the people in Special Branch who were in office at the relevant
time. So far as I can judge from the
quite lengthy interview I had with them, they are men of integrity. I deliberately did not go into questions like
why certain things were done or had to be done.

Q148 Mr
Murphy: Do you therefore think it was a
mistake that part of your inquiry was not actually to ask the question why they
acted cautiously?

Sir Peter Gibson: No, if I might say so. If I
had been asked that, I am far from certain I would have undertaken the inquiry
at all, because it seemed to me that was inevitably going to lead into
questions about whether the police acted properly, well, non-negligently -
things like that. Once you go down that
path - and I have seen it in my career at the Bar and judicially - you open the
door to legal procedures and requirements.
For example, if you criticise any person in a report, the practice these
days is to send a draft to that person; that person then raises queries on the
report. The whole procedure is
lengthened very considerably. The Prime
Minister wanted to know how quickly I could produce a report. It could not have been produced in anything
like the timescale that I followed had extra questions such as that which you
have asked been the subject of my review.
Also - if you will allow me to say this - no documents were produced
relating to what Special Branch was doing at the relevant time. They may have had various activities
ongoing. I know not. But the search for the truth would have been
that much more difficult - and it is ten years, as you know only too well,
since this awful happening.

Q149 Mr
Murphy: Given the enormity of Omagh and the
very fact that the inquiry was limited to the parameters you have outlined,
nevertheless this really does go to the heart of whether indeed, as you say,
Special Branch acted in the cautious way it did. That implies to me that Special Branch did
not do all they could at that particular time.
Surely it begs the question that that should have been part of your
investigation? If it was not then, do
you think it would achieve anything reopening the investigation on that
particular part?

Sir Peter Gibson: I have adverted to the difficulties in finding the truth in
relation to that matter. If, as I have
been led to believe, there are no documents, you are relying only on memories;
so I am not confident that it should have been investigated in that way. Certainly, if a judge does it - particularly
one with my background as a Chancery judge and a Court of Appeal judge, where I
do not deal with crime - I would not have begun an inquiry like this without
assessors. So you are bringing in
experts who would evaluate what it is that Special Branch were doing at the
time and why it was that they behaved so cautiously. You are second‑guessing decisions taken
some ten years ago. I repeat, that is
very difficult.

Q150 Mr
Murphy: It is but, given your background -
and I am sure that you always choose your words very carefully - why did you
put that phrase in? "Special Branch
acted in the cautious way it did."

Sir Peter Gibson: Because it was that, as you will have seen from the paragraph where
I set out the limits of what was handed over, the information was not very
extensive. I implied no more than that.

Q151 Christopher
Fraser: Given what you have just talked
about in relation to Special Branch and what they were doing, can you tell us
this? Did they specifically request
intelligence on intercepts before the bombing?

Sir Peter Gibson: This is Special Branch?

Q152 Christopher
Fraser: Yes.

Sir Peter Gibson: I set out in my report the function of GCHQ and it was in effect to
assist the police, through the agreed mechanisms, in the performance of their
duties. Again, I must be cautious as to
what I can say about what their instructions were, but you will know again from
what I say that GCHQ's speciality is signals intelligence.

Q153 Christopher
Fraser: Are you able to tell us whether
there were any requests by Special Branch to GCHQ in the hours immediately
after the bombing?

Sir Peter Gibson: Again, I am struggling to give you as full a reply as I can without
going into the area where I said I would not go. Perhaps I can put it negatively. I am not aware of any request made by Special
Branch to GCHQ that was not complied with.

Q154 Stephen
Pound: Sir Peter, I realise that it has
already been said a couple of times but please forgive me for repeating
it. It is a great pity that we are
having to put you through this. We are
very grateful for your coming today and I hope you will forgive me for saying
that, were the Chairman able to see the unredacted report, we would all have
been spared this. I know that I
speak for my colleagues on my side of the Committee when I say how much I
regret this. Could I ask you a question
that I am not sure you can answer but it is something that interests us
greatly. When GCHQ provides information
to Special Branch, how does it then reach Special Branch itself? Does it go directly to them or is there a
mechanism whereby GCHQ, both before, during and after Omagh, provides routine
intercept intelligence? Does it go to
Special Branch generally or directly to Special Branch South?

Sir Peter Gibson: I think I say somewhere that it goes to Special Branch South
directly and RUC headquarters. There is
no sort of filter, if that is being suggested, or anything that holds it
up. Indeed I have referred to the fact
that the answers come, if there was a telephone communication - that is to say,
GCHQ speaking on the telephone to Special Branch, that part of Special Branch
which is deputed to receive information - that is done immediately.

Q155 Stephen
Pound: Is that standing operating
procedure? Does that happen in the
normal course of business, if I can use that expression?

Sir Peter Gibson: You may be able to infer the urgency which would accompany such a
communication. Again, I am sorry to
repeat it. GCHQ is there to provide
information which Special Branch want. Special Branch are treated as the experts; not
GCHQ. GCHQ provides the information that
is requested and, as I have indicated, they do so fully and in a timely
fashion. Of course, if there are other
things to be done, like typing things out, then there may be some delay; but no
significant delay occurred.

Q156 Stephen
Pound: It tends to be raw data that is not
highlighted in any way that is passed from GCHQ to Special Branch, and they
then decide whether to extract from that or transmit it in toto. Is that correct?

Sir Peter Gibson: That is right. It does not
stop GCHQ from making comments.

Q157 Stephen
Pound: Indeed not, but surely Special Branch
had to get clearance from GCHQ before they could pass any of this data to
CID? Would that not slow the process
down quite significantly?

Sir Peter Gibson: There is bound to be extra time needed in order to comply with
those procedures, yes.

Q158 Stephen
Pound: My colleague earlier on raised the
question of the nine-month time lag in analysing the telephone numbers. Have you any idea what the normal timeline is
for CID clearance to be obtained from GCHQ by Special Branch?

Sir Peter Gibson: No, I really cannot say what is normal or not normal.

Q159 Stephen
Pound: I appreciate that normality is not
the issue here.

Sir Peter Gibson: GCHQ is treating Special Branch as a customer; so it is trying to
do what the customer wants. If the
customer wants something done urgently, it can say so. If it wants further information, it can do
so.

Stephen Pound: I have not heard that analogy since the high days of New Labour,
but ---

Chairman: I am not sure that is relevant!

Stephen Pound: I think that is really as far as I can go with that. I thank you for your courtesy.

Chairman: I do find all of this rather like having to examine Shakespeare having
only read Lamb's Tales! Could we bring in Dr McDonnell?

Q160 Dr
McDonnell: I am listening to your evidence
there, Sir Peter. I am very impressed
and I get the clear impression that GCHQ did its job; but the question I keep
asking myself is what was the point of all the monitoring if, somewhere or
other, it was going to get lost between up there and down there? Am I correct in arriving at the conclusion
that either rivalry or malfunction somewhere within the Special Branch allowed
all this useful work to go astray?

Sir Peter Gibson: Without being specific about the points on which complaint has been
made, you will know from the reports, the post-bombing reports, that you first had
the Parliamentary Ombudsman for the Police making certain criticisms about Special
Branch not passing things on. The
monitoring has to be done, of course, by GCHQ if GCHQ's assistance is
sought. A great deal of it may be done
by other agencies, such as the RUC itself.
The purpose is to put into the hands of the specialist, Special Branch,
what is being monitored. You are asking
a different question when you are asking about the transmission of information
from Special Branch to, say, the investigating team. That is a matter for them; it is not up to
GCHQ.

Q161 Dr
McDonnell: All your evidence - and I find it
very clear and very helpful - is that GCHQ did its job and produced the
information as requested and whatever failure happened happened further down
the line. Is there any suggestion - perhaps
this is all outside your terms and your remit - that there was rivalry or
competition or whatever?

Sir Peter Gibson: I only know what I saw in reports, the post-bombing reports. As you will appreciate, the Parliamentary
Ombudsman specifically asked for a separate investigation into the procedures
of Special Branch and that resulted in the Crompton Report, from which I cite
in my summary report. Again, I am
repeating myself, but that refers to complaints and suspicions between the two
branches of the RUC; so it would look as though there was that failure to
communicate.

Q162 Dr
McDonnell: I have bafflement, sitting here,
taking all your evidence at genuine face value.
It strikes me as bewildering why the Special Branch should seek
monitoring and seek reports and then not pass that detail on. That is the difficulty we have, sitting here:
it is to get our heads round this. It is
unfortunate. GCHQ would appear, on the
surface of it and on your evidence, to have done its job and to have done it
correctly. I think that you have made it
very clear to us that GCHQ has a technical role. It is not the judgment or the assessment of
the evidence; it is the generation of the technical support, if you like. The bafflement here - and again I think this
affects families and everyone else involved in Omagh - is why was all this
work, costing a fair amount of money, not put to some use?

Sir Peter Gibson: Special Branch would have to answer for itself, but they were in
one sense the people gathering intelligence by asking GCHQ to provide it, by
seeking it by their own means, and they no doubt had their own particular
reasons. I know not whether there were
disruption activities going on or what it was that was preoccupying Special
Branch.

Q163 Chairman: Sir Peter, the people who refused to give evidence to you - you said
to the Committee very frankly that you were sorry they refused to give evidence
- were they Special Branch?

Sir Peter Gibson: No. One was on the
investigating team. The other was
Special Branch, yes, but he did not lead a team.

Q164 Chairman: Had that gentleman from Special Branch agreed to give you evidence,
do you think you would be in a better position to answer the questions that you
have just been asked by Dr McDonnell?

Sir Peter Gibson: I doubt it. It would have
been nice confirmation for me if what I had heard was in fact the truth. Obviously one wants as much confirmation as
possible, if someone comes up with a bit of evidence ---

Q165 Chairman: Which is what we are seeking, obviously.

Sir Peter Gibson: Yes.

Q166 Kate
Hoey: I appreciate that you have done a huge
amount of work on this and it took a long time, and the whole thing must have
been quite stressful. At the end of it
all do you think that, on reflection, looking back, the Prime Minister might
have chosen a different way of dealing with this? In the end, has your report, of which we have
of course only seen 15 pages, done anything to help? We still have nobody who has been found
guilty; we still have grieving families; we still have no real answer. What actually did it achieve?

Sir Peter Gibson: I hoped it would have achieved the exoneration from these very
serious charges. At least, that is how I
would read it. I know Mr Ware differs
from me. He says that GCHQ, for example,
was not in the firing line at all. I am
wholly unable to see what was said in the Panorama
programme and agree with him on that. I
agree that that is not very satisfactory for the families and others who want
the people who did this behind bars as quickly as possible. So to that extent it has not achieved, as you
have suggested, all that much, particularly if those who see my summary report
are not convinced. It is very difficult
to convince people who feel as deeply as they do.

Q167 Chairman: Sir Peter, I feel very much in sympathy with you and I just feel
that, if only we could have seen what you had written, we might be totally
convinced by it. You strike me as being
one of the fairest witnesses we have had before us and we are grateful to you,
but we do regret the constraints. Do you
think that it is correct to infer from the fact that arrangements for the dissemination
of intelligence to detectives investigating crime in Northern Ireland have changed since
1998 indicates that those that were in force at the time of the Omagh bombing
were imperfect? Is that a correct inference
to draw?

Sir Peter Gibson: Forgive me for trying to clarify.
You are questioning...?

Q168 Chairman: We are told that the arrangements for the dissemination of
intelligence to detectives investigating crime in Northern Ireland have changed since
1998 and have changed, it was indicated to us, quite significantly. Is it reasonable to infer from that that
lessons were learned and that the arrangements in force at the time of this
terrible deed were imperfect?

Sir Peter Gibson: I do not know the details of the PSNI's internal procedures
governing what should be passed to the detectives and investigating team; so I
am in a bit of difficulty in giving a fair comment on that. Plainly there was huge dissatisfaction
amongst a large section of the police about this. I have heard even in this country similar
sorts of complaints about the relation between Special Branch and other parts
of the police. Whether that is true or
not I cannot say, but in Northern Ireland it does seem to have caused
a good deal of dissatisfaction, and I have referred, as I say, to what the
Crompton Report contained.

Q169 Chairman: It does indeed. Sir Peter,
we are all of us very grateful to you.
You have done your best within these difficult constraints. We are constrained because we do not know
what you wrote. Only a quarter of it has
been published and is available for us.
We are of course also - and this is why the Committee was happy to
delegate to me the task of looking at the report - very conscious of the
sensitivities, and we are very conscious of the fact that we all depend to a
great degree upon the integrity of our security services. This Committee is the last body that would
wish to publish information that could in any way endanger the security of the
state and Northern Ireland
in particular. But it is unsatisfactory
and, as you yourself have just said, it must be deeply disappointing to you as
well. You said that your report has not
achieved what you hoped it would achieve.
I would intend to go back to the Prime Minister following this session
and to ask yet again, in the light of what you have said, whether I can have a
look at this report. I think it is only
fair to say that to you while you are here.
Are there any things that you would like to say to the Committee
privately before we end our session?

Sir Peter Gibson: I do not, I am afraid, see what I can add. You are aware that the ISC has seen what has
---

Sir Peter Gibson: Whether you take comfort from their attitude, I know not.

Q171 Chairman: Sir Peter, on behalf of the Committee thank you very much indeed
for your courtesy in answering questions and the way in which you have sought
to answer them. We are very unhappy, as
you will obviously have gathered, but that unhappiness is in no way your
fault.

Sir Peter Gibson: Thank you, and may I thank you all for being so courteous in your
questions to me. A great relief, I can
assure you!